


the world forgetting, by the world forgot

by M_Leigh



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angstfest, Gen, M/M, Mindfuck, Pre-Slash, attack of the second person, brief discussions of physical abuse of the fucked-up werewolf family variety, everyone is terrible, like very very pre pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 09:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Leigh/pseuds/M_Leigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You’re asleep, when it happens: you know because you wake up, heart pounding in your chest, fangs digging into your lower lip hard enough to draw blood. For a second you have no idea what is going on at all, and then you think, <i>Stiles</i>."</p><p>From <a href="http://morgan-leigh.tumblr.com/post/53698772860/teen-wolf-au-when-stiles-uses-his-head-to-foil">this</a> Tumblr gifset. Prompt: "When Stiles uses his head to foil the alpha pack one too many times, they strike at his heart by stealing the sheriff’s memories of his only son."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world forgetting, by the world forgot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Febricant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Febricant/gifts), [connaissais](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connaissais/gifts).



> I'm going to try to cut myself off writing fic (or, substantial fic) for a while to do real work instead - so, here you go, enjoy. (Or, um, don't, as the case may be.) I need to work on something that DOESN'T involve hilarious Bad Guy Theatrics at the end. (I need some kind of support group for this shit, you guys. IT IS SO MUCH FUN AND SO TOTALLY LACKING IN NUTRITIONAL VALUE.)
> 
> For Nat, because everybody is awful, and bacarat, because of the mindfuck.

> Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.  
>  \--Dom Cobb, _Inception_

  
You’re asleep, when it happens: you know because you wake up, heart pounding in your chest, fangs digging into your lower lip hard enough to draw blood. For a second you have no idea what is going on at all, and then you think, _Stiles_.

You fumble around for your phone on your bedside table, squint at the luminescent screen in the darkness as you pull up his number and hit _call_. You hold the phone to your ear, staring up at the empty ceiling, waiting for him to pick up. It takes him three rings.

“Derek,” he manages, sounding just this side of a panic attack. You know; you’ve been there – that was your entire first year in New York, Laura vacillating wildly between perplexed and sympathetic and coldly disinterested. “Derek, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, they must have gotten to him, oh fucking shit, fuck, fuck –”

“Are you at home?” you ask, interrupting.

“I’m on the street,” he chokes out. “I’m on the street.”

“I’m coming,” you say, and hang up before he can say anything else.

It doesn’t take you too long to get over to the Stilinski house, even though you’ve got to drive. Stiles is standing under a streetlamp a couple houses down from his – you almost miss him. His shoulders are hunched under his jacket and he’s staring determinedly at his feet, only looking up when you’ve stopped the car next to him.

“What’s going on?” you ask through the open window. He’s frowning, but his lips are trembling – he’s trying not to cry.

“I need to get out of here,” he says. He hasn’t met your eyes yet.

“Get in, then,” you say, bewildered.

He does, slams the door behind him and buckles his seatbelt without saying anything. You pull away, glancing at his house in the rearview mirror, driving back to your apartment on autopilot.

“What happened?” you ask. You’re still in your pajamas, worn-down sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt – you didn’t even bother to put on shoes. Stiles is covered in layers, protective shirts and jackets laid one over the other, sneakers scuffed. His hands are twitching in his lap: you can see them out of the corner of your eye.

“They – messed with his head,” he says after a long, long pause.

“Your dad?”

He nods.

“What did they fuck up?”

He’s shaking violently by the time he answers you. “Everything,” he says, voice breaking. “Everything.”

 

*

 

You make him sit down at the kitchen table when you get back to your place, ushering him up the steps and over to an empty chair like some kind of mother hen. He’s somewhere in his head, not here – you don’t think he can actually see anything in front of him, right now.

He lets himself be pushed into a chair without any fuss, as much a sign as anything else that something is deeply wrong, so you do the only thing you know to do in a crisis: you make hot chocolate.

This used to be your mother’s thing, and Laura’s: Laura was the only one who got to learn her recipe, which was from scratch and absolutely criminally delicious. They used to make it together, for the rest of you, Laura’s singular housewifely trait, her only domestic inheritance from your mother. After she made it very, very infrequently, only when she was making amends for doing something shitty: you used to sit in your apartment late at night getting chocolate mustaches, tentatively allowing yourselves to enjoy something for once, before the morning came again and brought with it the crush of reality, the fact that you and Laura couldn’t go more than a few days at a time without having some kind of horrible passive-aggressive fight. You’ve lost it, now, the recipe. It died with her.

You have Swiss Miss instead. Stiles won’t know the difference.

He stares at the mug when you put it down in front of him, as though he doesn’t recognize it. “Drink it,” you tell him, and he does, gulping it desperately, not the way you’re supposed to drink hot chocolate at all. Part of you is expecting a Remus Lupin joke – Stiles likes to think you’ve spent your entire life living under a rock, but you’re not entirely culturally illiterate, especially when it comes to stories featuring largely benevolent werewolves – but he’s too far gone for that.

You watch him, for a second, watch his huge golden eyes flitting back and forth between invisible objects, watch his fingers shaking around the mug, and wonder why you woke up.

“Stiles,” you say eventually, gruffly, from where you’re leaning against the counter. Comfort is not your strong suit: you wish Scott were here – anybody, really, but especially Scott, for whom the act of reassurance, of physical comfort, is maddeningly straightforward. You think you should touch Stiles, maybe – his shoulder, his back – but you don’t really know how to do that, anymore. Physical contact is fine, but not – like this. This is alien to you.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, eyes still wide and glassy, vacant. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to – to do – I don’t –”

“Stiles,” you say, a little louder this time. “You need to tell me exactly what happened.”

He seems to come out of it a little, at that, shaking his shoulders minutely, though he still doesn’t look at you. “I was out with – I was at Scott’s, we – we went to Denny’s,” he says, sounding profoundly confused at the discovery that only hours ago his life was happening in a Denny’s, and that now it is happening here, in your apartment, mid-crisis. “I came home at – right before you called. Kind of late, I guess.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I came home and he – he didn’t –”

He stops, arms circling around him instinctively. “Stiles,” you say again, trying to sound gentle.

“He didn’t recognize me,” he says in a very small voice. “He thought – he thought I was – breaking in.”

Neither of you says anything for a long moment. “What did you say?” you ask finally.

“I just – I dunno, I asked him if he was – joking,” he says, hiccoughing. “I told him it wasn’t – it wasn’t funny. And he – he –”

“Yes?” you prompt a moment later.

“He told me it was a – a pretty sick idea for a joke,” he tells you. “Because his – his wife died before – before –”

He stops suddenly, leans his elbows on the table, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, shoulders shaking. He’s not crying, though: just shuddering, hyperventilating a little.

“It’s all – gone,” he mumbles from behind his hands. “Everything – all of it, the whole – the whole –”

You want to be able to tell him that it will be fine, that it’s reversible, that you’ll be able to restore his father’s memories to him, but if you made that promise, you would be lying: Deaton keeps telling you that it’s possible, but he won’t give details, and the simple fact of the matter is that none of you has managed it yet. The strange scabbed-over places in Erica’s and Boyd’s and Cora’s memories, in Isaac’s and Lydia’s, have not healed: they have simply malingered, on and on and on, over the course of months. Stiles knows more about this than anyone: Stiles is the one doing the research, the one talking to all of them, trying to piece everything together: it is Stiles who has subjected himself to hours and hours of Deaton despite his professed antipathy for the man, all in the service of working out what, exactly, the alphas are doing, and what you can do about it.

It’s Stiles, you realize, who keeps giving Deucalion a piece of his mind, whenever you have a run-in – not often, fortunately, but enough, especially since Stiles manages to sneak his way into the middle of the action depressingly frequently. Stiles isn’t any less afraid of the alphas than the other kids – he’s more afraid, you think, terror vibrating just under his skin – but he gets stupid with his fear, and that’s different, from the rest of them. Stiles, you’ve learned, has a self-destructive streak a mile wide. It makes you uncomfortable – it’s too familiar – but you’ve never quite yet managed to destroy yourself, instead wreaking havoc on everyone and everything around you. Stiles, though – Stiles has managed it. Stiles has wiped himself out of existence.

“We’ll fix him,” you tell him, even though you shouldn’t. “We’ll figure something out.”

“But what if we don’t, though,” he says, finally turning to look at you. His eyes are wide and filled with a kind of pure terror you haven’t seen in a long, long time. “What if we can’t do it.”

“I don’t know,” you’re forced to admit. “I don’t know. Has he seen your room? Could that – trigger anything?”

“All my stuff was in trash bags at the bottom of the stairs,” Stiles tells you, sounding empty. “He was going to arrest me but he didn’t – follow me out, when I – left.”

“Jesus fuck,” you exhale, rubbing at your temples, which have started to throb.

“Derek,” he says, voice small again, childish. “Where am I supposed to go?”

 

*

 

You sleep on the couch, Stiles curled up in your bed, fetal, frightened. You sit in the corner and watch him for a while, too exhausted to even have the energy to feel like a creep. You’re – worried, you think, or something like it. Stiles is the smartest of all of you, except for Lydia, and you like his intelligence more than hers, which is cold and sharp and calculated and makes you feel incompetent. Stiles’ burns hot, instead, spills out of him messily, enthusiastically. You like that, although you feel shy about it, think maybe you shouldn’t admit it, even to yourself.

But for all his intelligence Stiles is a raw nerve, unpredictable, dangerous: Stiles is forever suggesting murder, casually, as though he’s had blood on his hands so many times already that the idea doesn’t faze him. Stiles has been manic lately, in his flurry of work; you’ve been exploiting it because it’s useful, but you know it isn’t good for him. Stiles is even more desperate than you are not to lose anybody else, you think: it’s taken you a long time to realize that, to see that essential thing about him, but you know, now, that it’s true. Desperate people, as Peter is fond of saying, are the most dangerous people: desperate people can be manipulated.

To get his father back, you think, Stiles would do anything. Stiles would wrench your head back and slit your throat without hesitating, if that were what it took, would let your hot blood spill out of you at Deucalion’s feet.

You wake up uneasy, a crick in your neck, and find him in the kitchen, on your computer – you definitely haven’t given him your password, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped him – an empty coffee mug next to him, leg jiggling frantically. He hasn’t slept enough.

“Stiles,” you mumble, scrubbing a hand through your hair. You hate the mornings.

He hums absently without looking up. There are, you can see now, dark circles under his eyes. You walk around to stand behind him, get a look at the screen, but it’s just yet another incomprehensible page of Peter’s grimoire – incomprehensible to you, anyway; Stiles and Lydia have been making good progress with it, all things considered.

“Find anything?” you ask, and he shakes his head slowly, absently, as though only a very small portion of his brain is actually paying attention to you, processing what you’re saying.

“Have you eaten?” you ask, and he shakes his head again, just a twitch this way and that. You reach out and snap the laptop shut with a very satisfying click, and put a warning hand on his shoulder when he tries to protest, letting your claws come out just enough that he can feel them, through his shirts.

“We’re going to get food,” you tell him. “You’re coming. This is non-negotiable. There’s nothing in that fucking book anyway, you’ve been working on it for months and there was hardly anything useful.”

He reaches for the computer again and makes an agitated sound when you slap his hands away. “Stiles,” you say. “I mean it.”

You think he’s going to put up a fight, but he slumps back in his chair a moment later. “Fine,” he mutters. “But I want bacon.”

You get him two servings of bacon, because he’s a growing boy and has a stomach like a bottomless pit, and he inhales them without seeming to register at all what he’s doing; you doubt he tasted a single piece. His pancakes vanish almost as quickly, so you make sure to take as much time as you possibly can on your omelet, cutting ludicrously tiny pieces and eating them fussily. He finally does, at least, glare at you. It’s reassuringly familiar, if you’re being totally honest with yourself. You can feel his leg jiggling, again, under the table.

“It’s because I’ve been messing with them, isn’t it,” he says eventually.

“Probably.”

“Fuckers,” he says with feeling. “Motherfucking pieces of fetid fucking shit.”

You feel your eyebrows rising of their own accord, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s looking around at all the other people in the diner, not staying on any of them for more than a few seconds. But then, suddenly, they land on you, and stay there.

“Why did you call me?” he says, with a sudden sharpness at odds with how he’s behaved ever since you picked him up last night.

You think for a moment about lying, but you cannot for the life of you come up with any remotely plausible lie that you could feed him about calling him last night at exactly the moment when he was freaking out about his father’s stolen memories. You shrug, instead, and glance down at your food for a moment, cutting a sliver off and eating it.

“I felt you,” you tell him, and watch as he blinks, seemingly unsurprised.

“How,” he asks. “I want to know how.”

“I don’t know,” you tell him, though you’re lying. _Pack_ , you’ve been thinking since last night, _pack pack pack_. This is it, the very simple answer to his question: you have got him in your heart, now, the erratic pulse of him beating alongside your own slow thump.

He watches you for a second before he takes a bite, and for a brief moment you think that that’s it, that you’ll get away with it, with not telling him. He doesn’t have to know – there’s no compelling reason you can think of to tell him. He’ll be safer not knowing.

But then he puts his fork down and stares at you again, eyes hard, sharp. It’s a relief, in a way, to see him acting like this – like himself – even though that look is targeted at you, and isn’t friendly.

“You’re being nice to me,” he says, and you swallow.

“I’m – this is a crisis,” you tell him, shooting for peeved.

“Yeah, but, like,” Stiles says, eyes narrowing, “you’re not nice.”

“I can be – nice,” you say, even though you really, really can’t. _Nice_ is probably the last word you’d use to describe yourself. _Nice_ and _intelligent_ would be down there at the bottom of the list, together, smirking at you.

“Nope,” Stiles says. “You are, like, categorically speaking, a huge dick, all of the time, to everybody, even people you like.” He pauses. “ _Especially_ to people you like.”

You really can’t argue with that.

“Like, we all know you’ve got some kind of weird fraternal hard-on for Scott that – I don’t even want to know, dude, I seriously don’t – and you routinely shit all over him, which basically ensures, by the way, that he’s never going to want anything to do with you.”

You don’t tell him that, as of lately, that’s pretty much been the idea. You’re afraid of yourself, of what you might do – of what they might be able to talk you into doing. You wish you could trust yourself – you don’t want any of them to die, these teenagers, these _children_ , especially not by your hand – but you didn’t want to bite Gerard, or raise Peter from the dead, or go to New York after the fire, or kill your family. You have learned, over the years, that you have an almost stunning lack of control over the events of your own life, and your part in them; even as an alpha, you’ve been essentially powerless, impotent. So you’ve systematically driven each of them away, Scott and Isaac, Boyd and Erica, even Cora – even your sister, the baby of the family, whom Laura used to carry on her shoulders, who loved her more than she loved anybody on the earth, more than she loved your parents; your sister, who looked at you when she came back from the dead and wished so badly that you were somebody other than yourself. You can hardly blame her - it’s a feeling with which you’re depressingly familiar.

“Scott’s an alpha now,” he tells you.

“I know,” you say, because you do: Scott’s got a pack of his own. They’ll go after him next, try to get him to kill the rest of them, but he won’t – you know he won’t. Scott is a better man than you, for all that he’s only a boy, still.

“So,” Stiles says slowly, wheels turning in his head, “how are you still an alpha, too?”

For a moment you just stare at each other.

“You don’t have any pack left,” he continues. “Not even – you know.” _Cora_. “You’ve only got –”

You wait for him to get it, watch as his eyes go wide, first out of shock, then out of something that looks a lot like fury.

“You _fucker_ ,” he hisses. “What the _fuck_? What were you _thinking_?”

The truth is that you hadn’t been thinking at all. It is strangely, worryingly easy for you to not think about Stiles: he doesn’t carry the anxiety of the wolves, perpetually on the verge of losing control of themselves, susceptible to supernatural fuckery of all kinds. Boyd hates you because you left him in that vault for three months, ditto the newly-revived Erica (“I fucking _died_ , okay, dying is _no fucking fun_ ”). Isaac hates you because you made him, deliberately, because it was necessary; Scott hates you because he just does, and probably always will; Cora hates you because you were not what she expected you to be, not what she was hoping for, and because you made no attempt to be a little closer to what she _did_ want.

And Peter – Peter is just gone.

But Stiles: Stiles, you realize now, too late, is dangerous. You knew, of course, that he was at risk of being hurt – everybody in Beacon Hills is, now; it’s starting to show in people’s faces, on the street, in the supermarket, the pinched look of terror at the knowledge that any of them could die at any time, the latest victims of whatever horrible plague has alit on the town.  But you didn’t really _think_ about it. He’s – amusing, you guess; a sort of amusing distraction, who also happens to have more brains than anybody else you know, excepting Lydia Martin, who leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

You didn’t make any effort to push Stiles away, because he’s useful – you like him more than Deaton, anyway – and because you just _didn’t think_. You didn’t think about his pack affiliation at all, because he’s only a human, because it never occurred to you that he wouldn’t go after Scott, tied to him at the heart like brothers are, like twins.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” you tell him, aggravated, and he laughs, borderline hysterical.

“Oh, then, by all means, absolve yourself of all blame for this clusterfuck of a situation,” he says. “You’re seriously telling me you just _accidentally inducted me into your freaky werewolf club_? I thought that shit didn’t happen unless you bit me, which – no fucking way, just for the record.”

“Tell me, Stiles,” you snarl, leaning forward, “why would I want you in my pack, anyway? Why would I choose _you_ , of all people? Enlighten me. Please.”

“You want me because you don’t have anybody else,” he says. “Because they all fucking left you.”

“Not you, though,” you tell him. “Right? Because they don’t really have any use for you anymore, do they, Stiles? Scott’s got other friends now. It was just the two of you for a long time, wasn’t it? But now you can’t keep up. So you kept hanging around me, like some pathetic –”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, voice shaking. “Shut the fuck up.”

It’s kind of remarkable, how easily it comes to you, this kind of poison: how easily you know exactly, exactly what to say to make him hate you. It makes you wonder about yourself, about all the shit that lives in your brain. You aren’t a good person. There isn’t a single person you know whose faults and weaknesses you couldn’t exploit in seconds: there actually isn’t anybody left at all whom you’ve left unscathed.

“I don’t want you,” you tell him, even though your blood has been singing ever since you woke up last night, heart pounding, ecstatic, terrified.

“You’re full of shit,” he snarls. “You’re full of absolute fucking shit, because without me, you wouldn’t be an alpha anymore, would you? You’d be an omega. You’d be fucking toast.”

“I wish I were,” you tell him bitterly. If you were an omega, nobody would be trying to get you to kill anybody: they’d just kill you, instead.

Stiles snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, right,” he says. “Sounds just like you. You’ve never been known to get high on that power, right? That sounds really fucking out of character.”

You don’t say anything: they don’t know, yet, how an alpha pack gets made. You thought about talking to Scott about it, but you just – couldn’t, you couldn’t; it doesn’t matter, anyway, because Scott won’t be tempted. Scott will be a much better alpha than you ever were.

“ _Jesus_ , Derek,” he says, presses shaking hands on either side of his head. “Jesus, fuck, this is all your fucking fault. If none of this – if you hadn’t fucking _claimed me_ , they never would have gone after my dad, would they? He’d be – he’d be _fine_ , he’d know who I am, none of this would be happening –”

“You’re the one who wanted to help,” you tell him. “You’re the one who keeps texting me in the middle of the night, with information, who kept showing up like a bad fucking penny this summer, refusing to go the fuck away –”

He scoffs. “You fucking loved it, don’t give me that bullshit. You lit up like a fucking puppy every time I walked in the door because you’re so used to nobody giving a flying fuck about your life. It was the most pathetic thing I’d ever seen in my life.”

He’s right, about all of it, but you’re right, too, when you say, “As pathetic as a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t have enough friends his own age to keep him company all summer? I put up with you because I felt sorry for you, Stiles, don’t fucking fool yourself.”

He’s gotten very white, and his lips are pressed tightly together. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll never fucking bother you again once you fix my dad.”

“Once _I_ fix –”

“Once _we_ fix him,” he amends grimly. “He’s getting fixed. I will make your life fucking miserable for as long as takes to fix him, okay? That is not an idle threat.”

“I know, Stiles,” you say, bitter. “I know.”

 

*

 

You do, of course, have to go to Deaton: you always have to go to Deaton. He and Stiles speak some other language, now, a casual vernacular completely beyond you. You only understand magic as far as your own body takes you; that wasn’t your family’s specialty – that was, after all, why you had Deaton. You never liked him, even as a child: the man was unpleasant, and the things he did made your skin crawl. You are, you suppose, a supernatural creature: that does not mean you have any affinity for magic.

Stiles, though – Stiles does. Stiles has been helping you because he understands things that you don’t, grasps them instinctively in a way that seems impossible to you. You have always been somewhat enthralled by intelligence, by sheer brilliance, presumably because you lack it so sorely. You were never the smart one, in your family: not even close. Patrick, of course, was the brilliant one, but even Cooper, for all that he acted like a regular human jackass most of the time, aced all his subjects at school. Laura was less academically inclined but sharp, focused, strategic – just like your father – and Cora, too, was bright, quick. It was you, who were the slow one, the dumb sibling, quick with a sarcastic comment but bumbling and inadequate whenever it came to real cleverness, real cunning. Cooper never let you forget it.

Stiles doesn’t look at you once the entire car ride over to the vet’s office, and keeps not looking at you when Deaton takes you back into his office, eyebrows just slightly raised, ambivalently curious.

“It’s my dad,” Stiles says as soon as she door shuts behind you. “They’ve – fucked with him. With his head.”

“In what way?” Deaton asks, unperturbed as ever.

“They took his memories,” Stiles says.

“Of what?”

Stiles swallows. “Me,” he says.

“I see,” Deaton says, and doesn’t say anything else for a long moment.

“So?” Stiles says eventually, impatient. “What do we do? How do we fix it?”

“It’s commonly known that memory manipulation need not be permanent,” Deaton replies. “But as I’ve told you, Stiles, there’s no set formula for reversing damage, for restoring memories to their original state –”

“You said there were ways,” Stiles says, interrupting him, angry, “you said you’d know people who’d done it –”

“There are,” Deaton tells him, “I do. I did,” he amends a second later, eyes flicking to you, just for a second. “It depends on the skill of the alpha doing the damage. When I saw this – before – the wolf in question was… considerably less powerful than many of the alphas are now. With – suggestion – the victim recovered her memories quite quickly.” He looks at you again, just a glance, and you know, suddenly, who it must have been. A chill runs down your spine, at the thought of Deucalion’s claws in your mother’s neck.

“I told him who I was,” Stiles says, “I told him, and it didn’t –”

“They’re very powerful, Stiles,” Deaton says, almost gently. “You know perfectly well all the work we’ve been doing with Erica and Boyd, trying to restore their memories, get a clear picture of what happened to them. You know it’s hard.”

“Erica’s remembered a lot,” he says, “she –”

“Erica’s very young,” Deaton says, “and Kali had control over her – she’s very powerful, but she’s not as powerful as Deucalion. And Stiles – it pains me to say this, but – they took memories from Erica of the last few months.” He pauses delicately. “Seventeen years – that’s a long time, Stiles. That’s very deep work. That worries me.”

Stiles is bloodless, staring. “Fuck you,” he says finally, voice shaking, and you remember how young he is, how unprepared he is, for the world. You forget, sometimes, that being intelligent does not make you an adult.

Deaton sighs. “Stiles, we can –”

“No,” Stiles says, “no, just – fuck you, okay, I’ll – I’ll do it myself, I’ll – I’m going to fix this, okay? I’m going to fucking – _fix_ it.” And then he’s gone, slamming the door as he goes.

Deaton turns to look at you, unnervingly placid. “Have you discussed the ramifications of pack affiliation?” he asks, and you’re tempted to repeat Stiles’ refrain – _fuck you fuck you fuck you_ – but you just sigh instead, shake your head, and follow him out the door without saying anything.

He’s leaning against the car, arms folded over his chest, shoulders hunched. You stop a few feet away, staring, trying to figure out what to do. All your baser animal instincts are craving touch, craving physical contact, sensation; you want to press your warm hands against the back of his neck, the tense lines of his shoulders, his back; you want him to fist his hands in your shirt, curl his body against yours. You obviously can’t do that: it’s dangerous when you do that, for everybody.

You linger, though – you don’t know what else you _can_ do. Words are not your strong suit, when they’re not poisoned – your family was not verbal. Your father used to break your wrist as a casual punishment, and Laura occasionally threw you down the stairs when she was really aggravated with you (“alpha temperament,” your father said with a shrug when he found you sobbing at the bottom, broken bones and sprained muscles working themselves back together with the easy efficiency of youth), but your mother used to hug you, rub your back, card her fingers through your hair, and Patrick was the same, though more careful, briefer and lighter with his touch. You don’t know what to say to Stiles, here, now; you only know that you want to touch him, and that he won’t let you.

“What are you looking at?” he croaks, wiping at his eyes angrily, as though the presence of tears there is offensive to him, which you suppose it is.

“Nothing,” you mutter, and he steps away from the car.

“Drive me home,” he says. “We’re figuring this out.”

 

*

 

It’s a Saturday so Stilinksi is home, cruiser in the driveway, smell of him everywhere, rank with adrenaline. You don’t get out of the car until Stiles does, and he stays where he is for a long minute, staring at the house, muscles getting increasingly tense, heart pounding in his chest. You look away, but it’s a flimsy illusion of privacy, trapped in the car with him, his scent building up, his heartbeat loud in your ears.

“Come on,” he says finally, and pushes open his door.

You follow him up to the porch, watch as he knocks loudly and without hesitation on the door. This, you think, is the thing you like best about Stiles – better than his intelligence, than his stupid stubborn loyalty to Scott, better than the treacherous, delicate bones of his hands, his collarbones, his face, getting progressively sharper as he gets older (you try not to think about this ever, ever, but even you are human, sometimes) – the fact that, once he has decided to do something, he _does_ it.

Stilinski opens the door and his face goes dark the second he sees Stiles. It’s shocking enough that it throws you for a loop, and you’re not on the receiving end of it. Your hand twitches towards Stiles; you stuff it in the pocket of your coat, instead.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Stilinski asks, and his eyes widen for a second when he sees you. “Hale?” he asks, confused.

“Yes, sir,” you say, automatically, and then wince, although you’re not exactly sure what else you should have said, or done, in response.

“You’re involved in this, too, huh,” he says, face darkening even further. “I don’t know what you kids think you’re doing – I can get the force down here in minutes, need I remind you –”

Stiles is shaking next to you. “Dad,” he croaks. “Please, just – listen to us, for just a second –”

“I told you to stop that nonsense,” Stilinski snaps. “I told you not to – to desecrate my wife’s memory like that –”

“It’s _my_ memory, too,” Stiles tells him, voice breaking. “It’s _mine_ , you just don’t remember – I was there, Dad, I was there the whole time, when she had to start using the wheelchair at home and wouldn’t at first because she didn’t want to be a cripple – she had that purple hospital gown – she hated it so much – and she stopped – stopped paying attention to me, when she got too sick – don’t you _remember that_ ,” he asks, desperate, “don’t you remember?”

“I’m calling the deputy on duty,” Stilinski says, voice shaking, reaching into his pocket for his cell phone. “I don’t know who the fuck you are or what the fuck you think you’re doing, but this is over now.” He’s got his phone out, and he’s about to dial, so you do the only thing you can think of: you change.

His hand does still, which is something, you figure. Of course, the way he’s looking at you, you’re pretty sure he’s going for his gun next, but: you’ll take what you can get.

“What the hell is going on,” he says. “I want answers from both of you, right now.”

“Dad,” Stiles says, voice shaking, “Derek is a werewolf.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Stilinski says.

 

*

 

He lets you inside, but only just inside the doorway, and no further. You can tell that it’s driving Stiles nuts, because he’s fidgeting even more than normal, eyes flying from one thing to the other, around and around and around the foyer.

“Werewolves,” Stilinski says flatly. “You’re actually telling me that werewolves are real.”

“Yes, sir,” you reply, and he sighs, rubs at the bridge of his nose. You can feel Stiles next to you, practically vibrating with the suppressed urge to throw himself at his father. You reach out and rest one hand on his shoulder for a second before he shakes you off, but it’s worth it: he shoves his hands in his pockets, goes still for a minute.

“All the murders in town,” Stilinski says. “That’s because of you.”

“No!” Stiles cries, outraged. “I mean, we – we _know_ about them, but not – that’s not us, Dad, that’s another pack –”

“Pack?” Stilinski interrupts.

“Yeah, you know – rawr, wolfy community,” Stiles says, and you feel a pang of inexplicable fondness at his pathetic little growl. That’s the sort of thing, you know, that his father would normally roll his eyes at, smiling; now he just stares, blank. Stiles stops, swallows.

“So you’re both – werewolves,” Stilinski says. He’s taking it, frankly, better than you’d have expected, though you guess that it’s different, since as far as he knows you haven’t led his son over to the dark side, put him in inconceivable danger: to him you’re just strangers. Crazy, crazy strangers.

“ _No_ ,” Stiles replies, emphatic. “Ugh. No, I’m – I’m normal, I’m human, but Derek is, and – Scott? My best friend, Scott? He is, too –”

“Kid, the only Scott I know is fifty-four years old and weighs three-hundred pounds, I don’t think he’s chasing anybody down anytime soon,” Stilinski says, and Stiles winces.

“Look, this other pack, they took away – they messed with your memories, Dad, they – they made you forget – certain things.” _Me_ , his face is crying, _me me me_.

“You actually expect me to believe that I had a kid and just – forgot about it,” Stilinski says.

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles cries, and he steps forward, this time – can’t help himself, hands drifting in front of him, toward his father, who steps back, reaches down to where you imagine his gun sits, usually, from the look of devastation on Stiles’ face.

“I think you should leave,” Stilinski says, hard and unyielding. “I think you should get out of my house.”

“But – _Dad_ –”

“Stop calling me that,” Stilinski says, voice shaking. “Don’t – don’t do that to me, don’t make me think about that.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how you knew those things about my wife, and I don’t want to know. I think you should get out of town. Just – go, and I won’t look the other way. But if I see you again – don’t let me see you again,” he tells you both. “You don’t want that to happen.”

“Please,” Stiles is saying, “please, please, _Dad_ , don’t –”

“Get out,” his father says. “Get out now.”

You grab Stiles by the nape of his neck and steer him out the front door and down the walkway, down toward your car. He lets you rest your hand there that long, lets you rub your thumb up and down along the bumps of his spine, before shaking you off angrily and stalking around to the other side of the car, opening the door with too much force, and slamming it closed behind him. When you get in, he’s staring resolutely at the window, body curled up like a child’s in the seat, and he doesn’t move the entire drive back to your apartment, doesn’t make a sound.

 

*

 

You order a pizza, because you can’t cook for shit and you think Stiles is probably in the mood for comfort food, not the raw fruits and vegetables and pre-made quinoa and chicken breast from the Whole Foods across town, which is what you eat normally. You got to be a health freak, in New York – there wasn’t much else to do, and it wasn’t like you didn’t have the money to afford it. You started going to the gym for hours a day, obsessively, eating the kind of aggressively healthy food that Laura derided silently whenever she saw it.

You’ve always liked pizza, though – pizza with broccoli and onion, with spinach – so you order a large pie with your vegetable toppings on one side and sausage and pepperoni on the other, because you know – somehow, worryingly – what Stiles likes on his pizza. He blinks when he sees it, a half-hour later, that you’ve passed in silence, him sitting on your sofa and staring at nothing, you puttering around the kitchen to avoid being in the same room as him.

“I’m not hungry,” he says, flat, and you roll your eyes.

“You are,” you say. “Fucking eat dinner.”

He takes a slice and the proffered plate, and eats it slowly, methodically, as though he isn’t even cognizant of what he’s doing.

“Have you tried talking to any of the other cops?” you ask him eventually.

“He called one of them last night,” Stiles says dully. “They got them, too.”

“What about the school?”

He shrugs. “I guess I could go on Monday,” he says. “But I bet they don’t remember me, either.” He laughs, the sound empty: “It’s a lot of trouble to go through, isn’t it? For my scrawny ass.”

“They’re scared of you,” you tell him. “They wouldn’t bother if they weren’t scared.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m fucking terrifying.”

“You should call Scott,” you say, but he shakes his head.

“Stiles –” you start, but he cuts you off, puts his plate down on the coffee table too hard.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t fucking make me do that. Okay? I can’t – I can’t fucking do that, I can’t – if _Scott_ doesn’t – know me –”

And this, you realize, is how they are going to get you: your sad, motley pack of two. Stiles isn’t here because he wants to be here, or because you want him to be here, but because he is gone everywhere else: they have erased him.

You pull out your phone. “No,” he says, scrambling forward, “no, no, no –” but you’re bigger than him, stronger, and you hold him back with your free hand while you call Scott with the other, holding your cell phone to your ear and waiting for him to pick up, heart thudding in your chest.

“What?” he answers.

“Hey,” you say. “Have you seen Stiles today?”

“Have I seen what?” Scott asks, baffled, and you can tell from the way Stiles’ face goes still, almost dead-looking, that he could hear.

“Never mind,” you tell Scott. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Why did you _do_ that,” Stiles cries, voice breaking. “You fucking – _asshole_ –”

“You were going to find out anyway,” you say, curling your fist in the back of his t-shirt, by his neck. “Stiles – you were going to –”

“Did they get rid of me everywhere?” he asks. “Everywhere? Are you the – are you the only person left who _knows I fucking exist_? You and _Deaton_? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you actually shitting me right now?”

“I don’t know,” you say. “It looks that way.”

“How is that even possible?” he asks. “How can they fucking do that? Did they go into – into every single person in Beacon Hills’ house and fuck with their heads? How does that _happen_?”

“I don’t know,” you tell him. “I have no idea.”

 

*

 

He sleeps in your bed again. You don’t care; it’s not like you’re going to sleep anyway. You’re too nervous to sleep; too tense, too anxious, too afraid. Part of you wants to drive over to Stiles’ house right now, drag his father up to his empty bedroom, push his face into the bed, the closet. _Can’t you smell him here? Can’t you smell your son?_ You’re pretty sure Stiles’ bedroom smells distinctly of teenage boy even to regular human noses, but to you it is overpowering, like slamming into a brick wall of _Stiles Stiles Stiles_ , body odor and spunk and dirty socks and, underneath that, something cleaner, something that is just him, the thing he will smell like his entire life. If this had happened to your father, he would have walked straight up to the right bedroom and known something was wrong. He would have been able to listen to your heartbeat and realize that you were not lying. Stiles’ dad is a better father than yours was, but yours would have known. He would never have turned you away, not like this.

You have no food so you go to the grocery store the next morning, drag Stiles with you out of paranoia. He keeps staring at people in the aisles, freaking them out, daring or begging them to recognize him. They don’t. Nobody does, not a single person, not a one. At the checkout he accosts the kid working the register – his name is Sam Nicholson, apparently, according to Stiles – and asks him what their English homework was for the weekend. Sam Nicholson looks at him like he’s a crazy persona and then, doubtfully, at you, who as the oldest person present seems to have acquired some patina of authority, but you can only smile weakly and drag Stiles out of there.

“I’ve known that kid since I was five years old,” Stiles says once you’re in the car. Every part of his body is shaking. “Fuck, fuck, this is actually happening, oh holy fucking shit, oh holy mother of god.”

He doesn’t have a panic attack, exactly, but he looks like he might be on the brink of one, so you drive him out to the old house, which despite being the site of the worst single incident of your life is weirdly calming, now. Maybe it’s just that it’s overgrown, crumbling: there’s something inherently comforting about that, you think, humanity edging into decay. Or maybe that’s just you being morbid.

It does seem to calm him down a little, though: it’s a nice day, the light coming through the leaves of the trees in bright green patterns filtered down to the ground. It smells woodsy, out here, of damp earth and water and clean air. You both sit on the porch, Stiles leaning his head back, eyes closed. You bought apples and oranges, carrot sticks, hummus – he eats some, too, though not as much as you.

“What I don’t understand,” he says eventually, “is why they needed to do this.”

“I don’t know,” you say. Which is, of course, another lie: you do know. You’re perfectly well aware. They’ve made him your pack so that they can make you kill him. You’re not going to, though: you’re not. You refuse to be beaten, in this, not if it means harm coming to Stiles, who reached out to his father with those trembling hands, whose eyes have been wide and glassy and shot-through with panic ever since you picked him up, at the side of the road. They’ve been panicked even when he’s been furious with you. You know what it feels like, to be erased, to disappear: you were picked up and moved across the country with the only person left alive who really knew you, and you lived alone there for five years, anonymous in a city of anonymous people, unknown to all of them except the people who worked at your gym and your supermarket.

You’re not sure whether it would be better or worse, to know that all the people you love haven’t actually died, but are living their lives as though you never crossed through them. Your family is dead but you existed, in their lives, and they existed in yours: Stiles has been sucked out of reality entirely. Aside from Deaton – who really doesn’t count, as far as you’re concerned – you are the only person who knows him, anymore, the only person who can look at him and recognize the twitching movements of his hands, his face, his body for what they are: which ones are simple automatic processes and which are the product of increasing anxiety; the only one who knows that he is brilliant, that he is funny, that he is casually cruel, that he cares about almost nobody. You realize, with a kind of distant longing, that you wish you were one of those people. It doesn’t matter, of course: that is never going to happen. You won’t let it.

“It just seems so fucking impossible,” Stiles is saying, and then he goes still.

“Derek,” he says. “Derek, it’s really nice out.”

You look at him.

“Yes,” you say, dry, not sure where this is going.

“I mean, it’s _really fucking nice out_ ,” he says. There’s a bird chirping, somewhere in the distance.

“Yes, Stiles, it’s nice out, what’s your point?”

“Derek,” he says. “ _It’s January_.”

The bird stops singing.

“I don’t –” you begin, but he just shakes his head.

“It doesn’t make sense that they’d get into everybody else’s head,” he says, urgently. “Derek, _they got into ours_.”

“Fuck,” you say, and all of the sudden, he goes even paler.

“Or maybe,” he says, slowly, “they just got into mine.”

“Bravo, Mr. Stilinski,” Deucalion says, from where he’s leaning against a tree. “To be perfectly honest with you, that took a lot less time than I was anticipating.”

Stiles turns around, trembling. “You –” he starts, and Deucalion shrugs.

“Keep in mind,” he says, “I’m not confirming or denying anything, either way. That would be rather boring, don’t you think? I can assure you, fucking with a person’s grasp of reality is really no fun if you give them all the answers.”

You reach down into your pocket, as surreptitiously as you can, get your fingers on your phone, hope you can remember how to do this without actually looking down.

“Derek, I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Deucalion says mildly, and you stop, and hope it worked.

“Is he real?” Stiles asks him, and he sounds desperate. “ _Is he real_?”

“Come, now, Stiles,” Deucalion says. “Do you really think I’m going to answer that question?”

Stiles doesn’t say anything, but he glances over at you, skeptical.

“I’m real,” you say, even though you know perfectly well that that’s exactly what you would say, if you were fake.

“Maybe Stiles is the one whom I’ve dreamt up,” Deucalion suggests, clearly enjoying himself. Stiles frowns.

“I know what you want me to do,” you tell him. “I won’t do it.”

“What?” Stiles says. Deucalion just laughs.

“Oh, Derek,” he says. “Always so naïve. After everything that’s happened to you. It really astonishes me, I have to tell you. Your family weren’t nearly as gullible, you know.”

“I know,” you say. That was only ever just you. You remember Laura, in the car, driving east, lips pressed tightly together to keep herself from saying what she wanted to: _how could you ever have_ believed _her?_ But you had.

“Somebody needs to tell me what the fuck is going on,” Stiles snaps, “or I am going to lose my fucking mind.”

Deucalion blinks at him, and smiles. “Oh, dear,” he says. “He really hasn’t told you?”

“Told me _what_?”

“How an alpha becomes one of us. One of our pack.”

“No,” Stiles says.

“He has to kill everyone in his pack first,” Deucalion says, and smiles, a slow, sick thing spreading across his face. “I can assure you, the process is… exhilarating.”

“I’m not going to do it,” you say. “I’m not going to kill him.”

“Oh, Derek,” Deucalion says, almost fondly. “I don’t want you to kill anybody.” He pauses. “I want _him_ to kill _you_.”

Nobody says anything for a long, terrible minute.

“He’s not an alpha,” you say stupidly. “He’s not – that won’t work –”

“Derek, Derek, Derek,” Deucalion says pityingly. “There are two of you. Despite what you might have been told by your darling older sister – she was only very small when I met her, but she _was_ darling – two wolves does not make a pack. One wolf and one mage makes a pack even less.”

“Then this is irrelevant,” you say. “Why –”

“It’s useful, you know, to have some… human help,” Deucalion says. “That charming teacher is one thing, but her abilities are of limited scope. You,” he continues, turning to Stiles, “are a much more appealing option.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Stiles says, and Deucalion sighs.

“That vet knows a few things,” he says, “but he’s really beneath you. A mage of your caliber requires better training, more focus, more resources. We can provide all that.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Stiles says. “I’m fine here, thanks.”

“‘Fine,’” Deucalion replies thoughtfully. “I don’t know if that’s exactly how I’d describe it.”

“Well, I don’t think –”

“Stiles, let me tell you something about what happens when you grow up,” Deucalion says, talking over him. “People grow, and change, and friends abandon each other. Willy-nilly, left and right. People are really incredibly fickle, you know. Changeable.

“It’s already happening, isn’t it? Your friends are abandoning you. I apologize for being so – curt. But, well. I’m sure you’d agree, if you thought about it, long and hard. Mr. McCall already has, hasn’t he? Extraordinary, how fast years of friendship can just – dry up.”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, “shut up about Scott –”

“You know, this is the thing about memory manipulation,” Deucalion continues, almost – breezily. “It only works if it comes from a seed of genuine feeling.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything, but you can hear his heart jack-rabbiting, can smell his base terror.

“You were very, very easy to erase, Stiles,” Deucalion says. “Even dear old dad didn’t put up much of a fight. We could never have made him forget his wife – we tried, you know, just out of curiosity. That was, apparently, a step too far. But _you_ – you were easy. A snap of the fingers.”

“Stop,” Stiles says. “Stop, stop, stop talking, stop saying –”

“He’s lying,” you tell him. “He’s lying, Stiles, don’t – that’s not how it works, that’s not –”

“How would you know?” Deucalion asks. “Have you ever done it?”

“No,” you say frustrated, and he makes a _well, there you go_ face, but – it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter; you _know_.

“Stiles,” you say, “your father – it would be impossible for them to do that, if they’re telling the truth –”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he whispers, just the hint of a sound. “It wouldn’t be that hard.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” you snap. “Your dad –”

“Anxiety, high cholesterol, drinking problem,” Deucalion interjects, mildly. “You temporarily lost him his job last year, didn’t you, Mr. Stilinski?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Stiles whispers. He’s started to cry, fat babyish tears trickling out of his eyes and down his cheeks.

“I know, I know,” Deucalion says soothingly. “But you did, I’m afraid. Now, I can give you a second chance at all that – a second chance to improve your act, be the son he’s always felt he actually deserves. Be a little better behaved, a little more responsible, do a little better in school, be a little less annoying – you know the drill.” He pauses. “All you have to do is kill Derek – or,” he amends, “this thing that looks like Derek.”

“I don’t under–”

“If you kill Derek,” Deucalion says, “you’ll be part of our pack. Provisionally, you understand; we won’t bite you. You’re more valuable to us this way. And I’ll restore your father’s memories – or your memories, depending. Everybody will know you again. If you choose to decline… well. Your father will never remember you existed – whether in reality or simply in your mind, I couldn’t say.”

Stiles is sweating now, red, slick. “Fuck you,” he croaks. “Fuck you so hard, Jesus Christ –”

“Of course,” Deucalion points out, “that might not even be Derek, over there; you really have no way of knowing. Maybe you’re dreaming, and killing him will just wake him up.”

“Fuck you, I know how fucking _Inception_ works.”

Deucalion just smirks. “Who knows what’s up and what’s down, anymore?” he asks, spreading his arms out wide. “It’s so difficult to tell.”

Stiles pauses for a moment, thinking. “Why do I have to kill him to get all of that?” he asks. “Why can’t I just – agree to help you?”

“I’m not sure why else I’d believe you,” Deucalion says bluntly.

Stiles stares at him for a long moment, and then he stares at you. You strain your ears, trying to anything telling in the distance.

“It’s not like anybody will miss him,” Deucalion points out, and you wince, even though it’s true. It would be a relief to them, probably, to be rid of you, to be delivered of all your ridiculous baggage and all its many, many complications.

“We’ll get Mr. McCall, in the end,” Deucalion says. “You’d be together again. It’s all terribly romantic, frankly.”

Stiles is looking at you with an expression in his eyes that you can’t read at all.

“It’s okay,” you tell him, even though it’s not. You don’t want him to feel guilty. Something flickers in his eyes – and then he’s looking up –

You hear them, then, the sound of the policeman’s boots, thumping through the woods up to the house. You feel a sudden burst of affection for your phone and its emergency call function. Deucalion goes stiff when he hears them, turning in the direction they’re coming from and listening intently. “Oh, dear,” he says, though he hardly sounds upset. “This throws something of a wrench in our plans.”

“Get the fuck out,” you tell him. “Get out, _now_.”

He turns to Stiles. “Consider the offer on the table,” he says. “Indefinitely.”

“ _Now_ ,” you repeat, and he smirks, and goes. Stiles is looking at you strangely.

His father and a couple deputies burst through the trees just as Deucalion goes, and Stiles crumples to his knees next to you, sucking in desperate breaths through his mouth. You crouch down next to him, rub at his shoulder.

“It’s not going to go away,” he whispers, voice hitching, “it’s never going to go away.”

“We’ll fix it,” you tell him, reaching one tentative hand up and cupping the back of his head, feeling the fragile skull there, under his delicate flesh, his soft hair.

“I don’t even know if you’re real,” he croaks. “I don’t know if – any of this is real –”

“I’m real,” you tell him. “You’re real, too.”

“I don’t know how you can be so sure,” he says.

“My brain couldn’t come up with you,” you tell him, frankly. “You’d be a lot less of a dick, if I were making you up,” you add, and he laughs, kind of. It’s something, at least.

“We’ll fix it,” you tell him. “And if it comes down to it, you can just – do what they want.”

He turns to look at you, bleary-eyed, incredulous. “You’re – you’re _not joking_ ,” he says. “How the fuck are you not joking?”

“You’re pack,” you say simply. The well-being of the pack always comes before the well-being of the alpha. That much, at least, your parents taught you.

“You are so fucked up in the head,” Stiles says, and tries to laugh, but it comes out as a sob.

There are footsteps coming closer to you and you look up to see Stilinski standing over you, looking uncomfortable, and – afraid, you think. He looks afraid. He’s looking at Stiles very carefully.

“He looks like – like her,” he says eventually. “Like – my wife.”

Stiles turns and stares up at him, eyes wide and watery, and shakes his head. “Everybody always says I look like you,” he croaks, and Stilinski doesn’t look like he knows what to do with that at all.

“It’s in the facial expressions,” you mutter, and Stiles makes a sound that might be laughter. Your hand is still in his hair.

“Something’s going on,” Stilinski says. He looks spooked, disturbed – credulous. “Something very wrong is going on, here.”

“Dad,” Stiles croaks, fingers shaking. “Dad, I need help.” His face is shaking apart, red and splotchy and profoundly unattractive. You want to press him against you, not let him go. You look up at his father instead, and wait.

He stares down at you for a long moment before crouching down, slowly, next to you. “Kid,” he says gently. He doesn’t sound like he’s talking to his son, yet, but that’ll come, maybe, with time. “I’m going to help you.”

Stiles lets out a hysterical, relieved sob, and pitches forward, away from you and toward his father, who catches him with a look of surprise, but his hands do exactly what they’re supposed to: grip his son by the back of the neck, rub his back. He frowns a little, like he doesn’t quite know what’s happening, but the muscle memory is still there. That, at least, they did not take away from him.

“It’s all right, kid,” he says. “It’s all right. We’ll make it all right.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://morgan-leigh.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Note: I am almost certainly not going to write a sequel to this, BUT THAT SHOULDN'T STOP YOU. Just, y'know, let me know. :D


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